After the Crash
A Novel
-
-
3.8 • 43 Ratings
-
-
- $2.99
-
- $2.99
Publisher Description
"Wonderfully ingenious and altogether satisfying."---Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
Just after midnight on December 23, 1980, a night flight bound for Paris plummets toward the Swiss Alps, crashing into a snowy mountainside. Within seconds flames engulf the plane, which is filled with holiday travelers. Of the 169 passengers, all but one perish.
The sole survivor is a three-month-old girl--thrown from the airliner before fire consumes the cabin. But two infants were on board. Is "the Miracle Child of Mont Terri" Lyse-Rose or Emilie? The families of both girls step forward to claim the child. Dogged by bad luck, the Vitrals live a simple life, selling snacks from a van on the beaches of northern France. In contrast, the de Carvilles, who amassed a fortune in the oil business, are powerful-and dangerous.
Eighteen years later, a private detective tasked with solving the mystery of the girl known as "Lylie" is on the verge of giving up. As he contemplates taking his own life, Crédule Grand-Duc suddenly discovers a secret hidden in plain view. Will he live to tell it?
Meanwhile, Lylie, now a beautiful university student, entrusts a secret notebook into the hands of Marc, the brooding young man who loves her, and then vanishes. After Marc reads the notebook's contents, he embarks on a frantic search for Lylie.
But he is not the only one looking for her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French crime author Bussi makes his English-language debut with an insightful thriller. A three-month-old girl, dubbed the Dragonfly by the media, is the sole survivor of a 1980 airline crash in the Jura Mountains at the Franco-Swiss border. The Dragonfly was one of two babies the same age on the flight from Istanbul to Paris, but during the crash any bits of identification were lost. Was the baby Lyse-Rose de Carville, granddaughter of a wealthy family and now heir to an industrial fortune? Or was the little survivor Emilie Vitral, whose grandparents operate a van that sells snack food in Dieppe? Both sets of parents died in the crash, and the primitive DNA testing of the time can't provide an answer. Meanwhile, sleazy Cr dule Grand-Duc, a former mercenary turned private detective, spends the next 18 years trying to uncover the child's identity. This fascinating tale of intrigue and murder delves into complicated family bonds as it builds to a surprising and shocking conclusion.
Customer Reviews
Good book
The story was pretty good, keeps you guessing to the end, has interesting characters...giving it a 3 bc i found a few errors such as the judge meeting on the case in January 1980, but the babies were in September 1980, so the case wouldve had to be in 1981 not 1980
Author has way with words. Sadly this book doesn’t work.
Storyline was a great idea. It was stretched beyond any believable narrative by impossible scenarios, time, sequences, distances, relationships.